[Israel.pm] Joel on us

On Mon, 6 Dec 2004 14:20:22 +0200, Gaal Yahas wrote:
> >
> > http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2004/12/04.html>> The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
Obligatory link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis
> And this
> short article has absolutely nothing in the way of evidence for the
> declaration it makes.
Not only that, I'm not even sure Joel is right. I would translate
/Davka/ as "Because!". In fact, AFAIK young people in the U.S. use
"because" in exactly the same sense (and tone of voice!) as Israelis
do. Perhaps it is less prevalent, but it is still there.
As for /Rosh Gadol/ - what's wrong with the word "initiative"? E.g.:
"All I wanted to say was that methodologies encourage ראש קטן and I
need everyone on my team to be ראש גדול."
"All I wanted to say was that methodologies encourage a lack of
initiative and I need everyone on my team to have initiative."
* "Initiative" used here as a noun (from M-W): "2 : energy or aptitude
displayed in initiation of action"
** Obligatory Perl reference (we have to tie this thread to Perl
somehow :-)): The SWH also applies to programming languages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_and_programming_languages
It says there "that programmers skilled in a certain programming
language may not have a (deep) understanding of some concepts of other
languages."
I think that's one of the nice things about Perl - it encompases so
many programming paradigms, a good Perl programmer doesn't treat every
problem as a nail - instead, he uses Perl in the way which is most
conductive to the problem at hand, without any artificial constraints.
Just my 2 agorot worth :-)
--
Offer Kaye